AHCI problems...

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A friend has just purchased an HP laptop (G60-120EM I think) which has Vista Home Premium installed.

The problem is that the sole use of this laptop will be to run two programs (Starry Night Pro and Maxim DL) that drive a telescope and cameras. However Vista will not recognise the hardware properly or indeed run the software.

I was going to strip out Vista and install XP instead which runs everything fine. However the laptop has a SATA hard drive and there is no option to disable the AHCI in the BIOS. The BIOS does show "Factory Installed OS: VISTA" but this is greyed out and cannot be altered.

The only option I seem to have is to locate an XP driver for the hard disk and then integrate this into the XP install. At the moment when attempting to install XP, it gets through the first phase to "Starting up Windows...) and then blue screens.

Anyone got any other suggestions other than exchanging the laptop for one that has XP on it?

 

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A Wise man (HBroomhall!) once said "laptops and Operating systems are best left as they are".
I messed around with a Compaq laptop recently and failed. Is it possible to return/ sell it in exchange for an XP one?
Failing that, have you contacted the hardware manufacturer to see if they have any plans/fixes for their equipment to work with Vista?

Simon

 

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01092639&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=uk&product=3816515&rule=27242&lang=en

The official line from HP - don't downgrade. I'd see if you can get a replacement tbh.

Qs

 

The Starry Night site has a support document about use with Vista.

see here

Always a good idea to check with the support for the software before resorting to drastic action like changing the o/s to fit the s/w

For the Maxim product their support area faq says :

Will MaxIm DL work on my version of Windows?

MaxIm DL will operate under Windows 2000, XP, and Vista

 

It would be useful to find out what SATA controller its using, I know most HP desktops used to use siliconimage, not got a clue about there laptops.

Some OEM controller manufactures produce there own driver up dates, just stay away from there option ROM (BIOS) updates as these aren't really for OEM's and could mess things up (void guarantees etc).

 

Yes I've had Starry Night working under Vista before. Just had to run the installer in XP SP2 compatibility mode with admin privilages. However last night computer said no. As soon as you click next to start the install, it immediately asks for the 2nd DVD.

I saw the info about Vista on the Maxim website. We connected our DSLR and that was fine, set the exposure time for 1sec exposure, took a dark frame successfully and then it crashed while downloading.

I could try slip streaming XP drivers onto an XP install CD but there is no guarantee they will work. Given that the laptop is brand new I think the best thing he can do is get a refund and then buy an alternative which comes with XP.

 

Why not just fire off an email to the Starry Night and Maxim people ? Doesn't hurt to ask and may be something simple to resolve. It is their software after all.

 

I recently worked on a new hp compaq laptop 6735s that came pre installed with Vista basic and was trying to install XP pro.

Well I found this almost impossible owing to the factory setting in the bios set to ahci, tried installed the ahci sata driver from HP's web site but didn't work.

I then contacted HP who advised me to changed the bios setting to IDE, which I did and then installed XP pro. To be honest I'd do the same if I were you if that option is available in the bios.

Best wishes and failing that return the laptop and get one with XP pro pre-installed.

 

I take it you cant get a free upgrade to Version 6.2.3 ?